Sunday, August 31, 2008

This weekend there were a couple of on-line quilt events in which I was interested in participating. Bonnie is hosting the old tobacco road mystery. And Judy has been posting some directions for an easy quilt she designed. Both quilts looked like a good way to put a dent in the scrap bin/stash. But, before hubby took off for a fishing weekend, he made me promise not to spend my time holed up inside if it was nice outside. And it has been absolutely gorgeous this weekend. So, I have been forced to abandon those plans, which is probably for the best anyways. I already have way too many UFOs .

Of course, I am still suffering from a terrible case of insomnia. I nap in the sun all afternoon, and am awake most of the night. Actually, I kinda feel like I have my days and nights mixed up. So I have spent my normal sleeping hours in my sewing room, quietly adding borders to more quilt tops.

This one is still waiting for more borders. I really want to add something similar to the border on the top pictured below. It was made by Caroll, who was my teacher while I worked on the applique blocks in the quilt top above. (I hope you don't mind me sharing your photo, Caroll.) I am not really sure how to proceed with this type of border, so it may take a while to finish. Especially in my sleepy state.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

It has been a pretty productive couple days for me. I have been helping my hubby load songs onto his computer so he can put them on an mp3 player that he received for Christmas in 2006. Yup, you read that right, 2006. It has been sitting around unused for a year and a half because while he wants to have the music on the mp3 player, he does not want to make the effort to put it there. So I am doing it for him...grudgingly.

Completed buck-a-block top

At least I have still had some time for myself and my sewing room. I have borders on two more tops now. One is the buck-a-block top from last year. The other is the strip quilt I am making with the 30's prints. I was hoping to cut the binding strips for these tops so I am all ready when the time is right.

Completed 30's strip top

But, I have already misplaced the fabric for the strip quilt and I have all but torn my sewing room apart trying to locate it. Sheesh. Maybe I will find my missing ipod sync cable in the process. So far though, I have found neither.

Friday, August 22, 2008

After long last, I am finally healed and feeling well enough to get back to my quilting. It feels sooooooo good to be playing with fabric again. The first order of the day should be to bind the nine-patch that I quilted earlier this year. But, am waiting for some cooler weather for that. So, for now I am finishing off some tops that have been sitting on my ufo pile. Specifically, I am adding borders to them.

The first up is Matt's star quilt top. I was not so gently reminded about that earlier this week. Matt's cousin was talking about a quilt that Grandma gave him because he is going off to college. And Matt replied that his mother had started a quilt for him a lonnnnnnnng time ago, but had appearantly forgotten about. Ummm, no, I did not forget, I hit a road block with some bleeding border fabric, and never got around to finding something to replace it with. Until now that is.The top is now complete and waiting for cool weather for quilting.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

This summer has not been very productive for me as far as quilting goes. I hope to get back into the swing of it soon, as I have so many tops needing quilting, as well as a stack of quilts I would like to begin. But, since I have not been quilting, I have had little to blog about either. That makes me sad.

So I will share with you today the truth about one of my unfinished quilts. It is a round robin top that I received back last year. I blogged about it here when it came home to me. I really liked the overall feel of the top when it arrived home. The colors are great and I love the variety of the different rounds. But, I found the top to be a bit unsettling. So, I put it aside, thinking that maybe I just needed to add a final round to it.

This is the top as it arrived home to me.

When I pulled it back out earlier this year, I knew instantly why I had never finished the quilt. The outer border was "off". It was not symetrical . I felt terrible about re-doing someone else's hard work but I just couldn't keep it as it was. So, the control freak in me won out. I pulled the border off and rearranged the blocks so that they made a border that flowed more to my liking.

But once I got it all stitched back together, something still wasn't right.

Yikes! How could it be? Had I not put it back together right? I stared at it for a while then walked away. When I returned to the top, once again the answer was obvious. There was another round of blocks that was not behaving as I would like it to. I just hadn't noticed earlier because of the outer border issue.

Once again I struggled with the concept of re-doing someone else work. After all, isn't that the whole idea of a round robin- to have contributions from other quilters? But, I caved to the inner control freak (don't tell my husband; he thinks he's the control freak of the family ;) ). I ripped out the offending blocks and rearranged them to my liking before putting it all back together again. Sigh. At any rate, here is the after picture of the top.

I hope I haven't offended those lovely ladies who worked on my round robin. I imagine that I probably have. So, I do apologize for that. But, the truth is, I would never finish this quilt if I hadn't made the changes. And that would have been the bigger offense.